I’ve got the same personality, the same flaws, but I’m just not the same guy I was. I did not preach, I did not teach, so I spent eight hours a day alone with Jesus. When Matthew died, I took a four month grief sabbatical. A lot of people think, "If I could just be perfect, then everybody would like me." No they won’t – even Jesus was hated.īut the past year must also have changed you? Jesus was perfect, and yet he was criticised, attacked and crucified.
You have to live for an audience of one you can’t worry about what other people think. How did you cope with it?Īs a public figure there is never a day of your life that you are not criticised. It must have compounded the shock and the grief. There were people on the Internet celebrating my son’s death, writing all kinds of vile things, and saying, "May he burn in hell." Lots of people were actually celebrating and rejoicing, and armchair therapists were determining why he’d taken his life. Suicides are the hardest funerals to do.and then I'm doing a child’s funeral, my own child’s suicide. You’re not supposed to outlast your children. The most difficult is the death of a child, without a doubt.
I've been at the bedside when a lot of people have breathed their last breath. I've done maybe 1,000 funerals in my time as pastor. We didn’t have beds for them they just slept on the couch and in the kitchen, saying, "We’re not leaving you alone." The next day I sent a letter to my church saying, "I’ve been your pastor for 33 years, I need you now, I need you to pastor me for this time." That night they came and spent the night at our house. The deeper the pain, the fewer words needed. When Matthew died, within 30 minutes they were there on that sidewalk with us, hugging us, and just being with us. My small group was the stability for me in this last year. She said: "Choose joy." I looked at her and thought, "Are you kidding me? How do you choose joy when your son on the other side of that wall has probably just taken his life?" But that’s faith. Kay was wearing a necklace that had two words on it: "Choose Joy". We were standing, Kay and I, holding each other, sobbing. We were waiting for the police to come and break down the door and we feared the inevitable. The night that Matthew died, we were standing outside the front of his house with the doors locked. He was a brilliant, really brilliant kid, with a tender heart but a tortured mind.
#PASTOR RICK WARREN SONS SUICIDE TV#
We often watched TV together and laughed. Matthew had been over the night before, all perfectly normal. My mum is there, my dad is there, my brother is there, and I have a lot of friends there." I didn’t know that five days later my youngest son would be there too. At the end of the message I said, "The more people I love that are in heaven, then heaven becomes closer and more real to me. Many people came to Christ and I preached on the hope of resurrection. Last Easter was the 33rd birthday of Saddleback and we had more then 50,000 in attendance – it was a big day for us. That week was what I call "my battle for hope". I’m not exaggerating maybe 10,000 people have written or connected in some way saying: "I lost a friend through mental illness." Everybody knows somebody. It was hard enough being my son, much less to struggle with mental illness it was his story to tell, so to protect his dignity we kind of kept it quiet.Īfter his death I said we wouldn’t do any interviews for six months – we didn’t even know what we were feeling, we were just grieving parents.Įventually, I started sharing my feelings on social media and I realised that people were coming out of the woodwork and saying, "That’s me, that’s my problem, or my brother’s problem." The floodgates opened. Since Matthew was a baby, we’ve known that someday we would become spokespeople about mental illness. The day that I prayed would never happen, the day that I figured might happen, happened five days after Easter last year. What God has to say about your anger problem.Mike Royal: There is too much cult of personality in the Church.
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